Bringing Client Entertainment Into the Light

Having fun is serious business. Companies spend north of $600 billion each year taking their clients to sporting events, concerts, upscale restaurants, and a ton of other experiences in the hopes doing so will lead to new or increased business.

With these kinds of stakes, you’d think there would be an easy way to show that all this entertaining is actually working. But when leadership asks to see the return on this investment, the response is often crickets.

“It’s really more about, you know— relationship building,” a chief executive explained when I asked whether his customer entertainment was working. “We don’t even try to quantify it.”

In fact, many companies I’ve spoken with are positively terrified to look too closely at their client entertainment. And it’s not difficult to see why— with millions of dollars of tickets up for grabs & no good way to track them, it’s just a matter of time until someone sees an opportunity for personal gain.

I’ve seen cases where employees were caught for requesting company tickets then turning around and selling them online. In one case, the thief even kept careful records to measure his profits!

Time and again, I see companies, including some of the world’s most successful brands, trying desperately to manage all their entertainment assets over email & Excel. Add a few regional branches, different departments, multiple approval streams, and pretty soon you’re completely overwhelmed.

Companies who do a lot of client entertainment need an easy way to see that these events are working— that the right people are using company tickets, that they are taking their most valuable prospects and customers, and that it’s all contributing to your bottom line. By creating one easy way for employees to request events and giving company leaders the ability to see exactly what’s going on, we help the world’s best companies bring client entertainment into the light.